Lord of Lies

Lightstone out into that accursed mist?'

'Guard the shore against our return,' I said, dapping him on his shoulder. I glanced at the Manslayers sitting on their ponies, at their golden hair and long, tanned arms bound in shining gold. I smiled as I added, 'And guard yourselves against yourselves'.

I was loathe to leave Altaru behind, for I well-remembered how this noble animal had led us to the first Vild through the trackless tangle of Alonian forest But there was no way my great stallion could stand inside 1 little fishing boat. As it was, there was barely room for Master Juwain, Maram, Atara and me — and for Estrella, too, for at the last moment, as I stood in the shallows pushing the boat out into the lake, she broke away from Behira and splashed through the water up to my side.

'All right, all right,' I laughed out as Estrella jumped into my arms. I remembered for the thousandth time Kasandra's prophecy — and now Atara's. 'We won't leave you here.'

I lifted her into the boat, and then climbed in myself. I sat with her near the stern. Maram, to my surprise, volunteered to pull the oars, and he settled into the deep seat in the middle of the boat. Atara and Master Juwain, up near the bow, faced outward toward the center of the lake and the omnipresent gray mist that covered it.

To the sound of little waves lapping against the boats sideboards and the long, wooden oars dipping into water with steady rhythm, Maram rowed us out into the lake. It was a calm day, and a clear one; except for our uncertainty as to what we would find in this lake, it seemed that we had little to fear except the radiance of the sun, which in the middle of Marud was hot, constant and fierce.

My diamond armor threw back much of its light in a splendid display, and I could be thankful that I was wearing it instead of my much hotter steel mail. But I was quite hot enough. I sweated in saltwater streams that stung my neck and trickled down my back and sides. The sun burned my face. It seemed to suck the moisture straight out of my boots and leggings, which had soaked through when I had pushed off the boat. The still air was like a blast from an oven searing my eyes.

And then Maram rowed us straight into the wall of mist, and it immediately fell cold. It was like being wrapped in a blanket soaked with ice water. I began shivering, and so did Estrella. I covered her with my wool cloak, but it didn't seem to help very much. The mist dewed our hair and clung to our garments in a slick of moisture. It filled our nostrils and mouths with every breath we drew. There was no escaping it. 1 turned my head right and left, but this cold, gray cloud seemed equally dense in all directions. It lay so thickly about the lake that 1 could barely see Atara and Master Juwain near the prow as they drew on their cloaks and shivered, too.

'I can't see a damn thing!' Maram complained as he paused and pulled up the oars. 'I can't see where to row!'

'You can see me', I said to him from only a few feet away. Even so close, there was a moist, smothering grayness between us that seemed to steal the clarity and substance from Maram's considerable form. 'Keep rowing, straight ahead, and we'll be all right.'

'But what is straight, then?'

In answer, I placed my fingertips together like the roof of a chalet and pushed my arms out straight toward the prow of the boat.

'Are you sure, Val? Do you remember how your sense of direction failed you in the Black Bog?'

'This isn't the Black Bog,' I said. 'We set out from the north side of the lake. If Master Juwain's verse tells true, the island must be at the lake's center, toward the south.'

Maram turned to look behind him into the swirling mist, and he said, 'And you're sure that way is south?'

'As sure as a swan flying toward Mesh at the fall of winter.'

'Well, you've always had this uncanny sense. Of course, it did fail again when we approached the first Vild, didn't it?'

'Just row, my friend,' I said to him, 'and we'll be all right.'

With a grunt of doubt, Maram went back to working his oars. The sleek wooden blades dipped into the water again and again. Other than this soft sound, it was almost deathly quiet. The whoosh of Maram's breath bubbling out into the air seemed almost as loud as a storm wind.

'It's colder here,' he said suddenly, 'Do you feel it Val?' Out of nowhere, the mist grew suddenly thicker, as if it were a wall of cold water pushing against us. It chilled my bones. Something in the air and in the gray lake beneath us — some strange, unsettling and powerful thing — seemed to warn us away in a shiver of dread that tore through the deepest parts of our bodies.

'Accursed mist!' Maram muttered. 'This can't be natural.'

'You know it's not,' Master juwain said to him from the front of the boat. His voice sounded thin and distant. 'We know the Lokilani protect their Vilds with barriers beyond mists or walls of trees.'

'Invisible barriers,' Maram muttered. 'But felt keenly enough by the heart and soul. Atara! Can you see anything?'

'Less than you,' she said pulling at the blindfold across her face.

Estrella, sitting next to me on the moist wood of our seat, pushed herself against the hardness of my armor as I pulled my cloak more tightly about us. I brought forth the Lightstone in the hope that its radiance might show our way through the ever-thickening mist. In my cold hands, the little cup poured forth a glossy, golden light. But the tiny particles of mist threw it back into my face and scattered it so that the air surrounding the boat scintillated and dazzled the eye, making it even harder to see.

'Put it away!' Maram cried out, letting go his oar to cover his face. 'It's no help here!'

I did as he asked, and sat in the darkening grayness as the swells of water beneath us moved the boat gently up and down. The reek of rotten old fish emanated from the boat's creaking boards; the mist seemed to grab this stench, smothering us with it and nauseating us.

'Row, then,' I said to Maram. 'What else is there to do?'

For a while, Maram rowed with as much effort and as steadily as he dared. His fat cheeks puffed out with every stroke, and his beard headed up with moisture, whether from sweat or the mist, it was hard to tell. After a while, he stopped and asked me, 'How long do you think I've been rowing?'

Water lapped against the boat's sideboards, and I said, 'Not long enough.'

'At least an hour, I should say. If I've pulled true, why haven't we reached this damn island yet?'

'We will, soon, just keep rowing.'

With a soft curse, Maram began working the oars again. And each time he heaved his massive body backward in completion of a stroke, he muttered something under his breath.

Time passed. In this neverland of icy mist that devoured the sun, it was hard for me to tell exactly how much time. It might have be minutes; it might have been days. And then I listened more closely to the words Maram forced out with his heavy breath, and I heard him say, 'Five hundred eighty-one, five hundred eighty-two. .'

'What are you doing?' I asked him.

He shook his head against the brown curls plastered to his face and told me, 'Counting strokes. If each stroke requires three seconds, then after twelve hundred strokes, well, that's an hour.'

'Yes, very good,' Master Juwain called out from behind him. 'But supposing each stroke requires two seconds or four. Then — '

'It doesn't matter,' Maram said. 'I'm just trying to get an idea of how long I've been at this. There's something strange about time here. Can you feel it? It seems like I've been rowing for five days.'

He went back to work with the oars and back to his count. After an even longer time — he didn't say what number he had reached — he shipped oars and slumped forward, resting his head on his hand.

'I'm tired,' he said. 'I'm cold. Val, how about a bit of brandy?'

I brought out a bottle of brandy and poured some into a cup. I handed it to him; he drank it in three quick swallows, then returned the cup to me for another round.

'There's something very wrong here,' he announced. 'I'm sure we're caught in a current. Doesn't anyone feel the boat moving?'

We all kept a silence as we felt for motion of wood over water. It seemed to me that we were moving, backward toward the north.

'Yes, yes, a current, of course,' Master Juwain said. 'In the Vilds, the telluric currents are very strong.'

I tried to imagine these invisible, firelike flows that knotted and gathered in certain places in the earth. Like